Abstract
This paper has two purposes. One is to investigate critically the major attempts that have been made to formulate the Quinean criterion of ontological commitment. The other is to give a satisfactory formulation of the Quinean criterion on the basis of the investigation. I classify the attempts that have been made into two major kinds, semantic approaches and syntactic approaches. Although both kinds of approach fail to formulate the Quinean criterion adequately, both are found to have their own advantages which are complementary to each other. I then offer a new formulation based on the idea of "provability on semantics," inspired by the mutually complementary character of the two kinds of approach. I argue that my formulation adequately reflects metaphysicians' use of the Quinean criterion and is thus promising.
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